


Girls can be dads

by Magik3



Series: Kitty told me to name this series [12]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 06:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11549106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magik3/pseuds/Magik3
Summary: Rescued little kids are staying at the mansion. Is Illyana playing with them or not? Kitty discovers a few things about her girlfriend that lead to a conversation about the future and being parents.





	Girls can be dads

  
  
“Holy crap,” Sam said, so Kitty had to go see why all the New Mutants—or almost all of them, no Illyana—were clustered in the doorway to the living room.  
  
She partially knew what she’d find. The mansion was still hosting four very small, very important guests. These were the kids they’d found in a creepy secret lab: mutants who weren’t old enough to have powers yet. Children of parents whose own mutant powers weren’t very powerful. The kids had been stolen for experiments, rescued, and were now staying at the mansion for a few days while the Professor contacted their families and waited for them to show up and take their kids home.  
  
A few had already been picked up. Their parents had been easy to contact and nearby. But a few of the kids had been taken from families overseas. Between the Professor’s telepathy and Illyana’s translation spells, everyone could be understood well enough, but the logistics of getting their families here and then having them take their kids back across the world with the right paperwork—that took some doing.  
  
The bulk of the babysitting had fallen on the New Mutants while the X-Men hunted down the people responsible for the creepy secret lab. Kitty had been “volunteered” to stay behind with the New Mutants. She’d almost protested, but she was curious to see how Illyana was with kids.  
  
There were some younger kids at the school and Illyana was polite and distant to them, but they often avoided her. Probably more due to scary stories the older kids told than anything else. She didn’t seem interested in them. Did she avoid the little kids as much as they did her? Was their relatively peaceful existence a too painful reminder of her own lost years?  
  
Was Illyana not in the doorway group because she’d gone off somewhere, as she often did? Or was she in the living room? Not wanting to phase through people, Kitty pushed in between Rahne and Roberto to look.  
  
The cushions were off both couches, the couches close together, the cushions pressed into service as the two walls of the fort that were not couches. Blankets had been draped over the top. One cushion served as the door and it was wide open. Inside the fort, illuminated by a flashlight, four small kids were busily constructing a town made of blocks.  
  
It was the most activity Kitty had seen from them since they’d been rescued. Two of the littlest kids barely spoke at first. The other two still in the mansion would answer questions, but also preferred to hide under tables or behind doors. Very smart to build them a fort.  
  
Who had thought of it? Kitty pushed up on her toes to see more of the fort’s interior. Yes, that was Illyana’s bright hair illuminated by the glow from a flashlight. She had the flashlight in one hand and in the other … a toy dinosaur?  
  
 “You only have a few more minutes before the dinosaurs arrive,” she told the kids, waggling the dinosaur at them.  
  
A flurry of activity among the kids.  
  
“The dinosaur attacks? Is that a good idea?” asked Amara, who’d come up behind Kitty.  
  
“Uh, no, it’s a peaceful dinosaur. It’s bringing a date to dinner,” Dani said.  
  
“What?” from Sam.  
  
“That’s what I’ve heard so far,” Dani told him. “Illyana just put a bunch of toys in the middle of the room and built the fort around the toys. She didn’t say anything. Whole room was ghost-silent. When she got the fort done and pushed open that cushion-door, the kids all crawled in there with her.”  
  
Illyana was sitting against the back of one of the couches, crosslegged. One of the littlest kids was half in her lap, bent forward, making a building out of blocks. When the kid slipped to one side, she moved her flashlight-holding hand to brace the little body.  
  
Dani went on explaining, “Illyana watched for a while, helped them sort the pile of toys, saw what they liked best. And then she suggested that maybe this one dinosaur was sweet on that other dinosaur and would like to take it out to dinner. Not just any dinner, but the best dinner at the best restaurant in town. So the kids are making a town square with a restaurant and, I think, a carnival for after. They’ve talked more to her and each other in the last hour than to all of us combined the last two days.”  
  
“Fort’s genius,” Sam said. “Wish I’d thought of that.”  
  
Two kids were combing through toy pieces, whispering to each other, handing them back and forth according to some secret plan. The last kid was off to one side, in the darkest part of the fort, sculpting in Playdoh. Kitty felt sad for that one until the kid asked, in a high, piping voice, “Do dinosaurs like tomatoes in their salads?”  
  
“Oh yes,” Illyana answered. “But the brown dinosaur likes them more than the green one. Can you put more on one side than the other?”  
  
“Sure!”  
  
It was all genius, Kitty thought, realizing that Illyana had no idea how to talk to normal kids, but give her a handful of terrified, traumatized little people and she knew exactly what they needed: safety, play, family, small actions to take, choices they were in charge of, so they could feel important again.  
  
Illyana propped the flashlight between two cushions and picked up a second dinosaur. She had the second dinosaur say, “Oh this is a lovely little town.” To which the first said, “Wait until you see where I’m taking you to dinner.”  
  
The second dinosaur had a strong Russian accent and Kitty wondered, trying not to grin too much, if in Illyana’s mind, the dinosaurs were the two of them.  
  
Both dinosaurs approached the block structure. Illyana looked around at the kids in mock worry, “Who’s in charge of the appetizer course? What are you serving? Have you fired the grille yet? Are we ready for these guests?”  
  
More scrambling. The kids had everything from the very chaotic, old toy chest in the corner of the room and were making highly improbable meals out of mismatched toy parts, Legos, Playmobile props and Playdoh.    
  
“I don’t even know how to think about what I’m seeing,” Roberto said and for once Kitty agreed with him.  
  
“I’m appetizers,” one kid said. Another chimed in about bringing the salad course, one had the main course, and one was on entertainment. That meant no dessert.  
  
“Excuse me,” Kitty said and phased through the gathering crowd into the kitchen. She got a tray with bowls and spoons and ice cream.  
  
Phasing through the wall, hidden by the cushions of the fort, she waited until dinner had been served to the dinosaurs and eaten. This took quite some time. At each course, the dinosaurs had special requests. They wanted more of what they liked. Illyana kept the kids scrambling around finding more items over which the dinosaurs could delight.  
  
But while phased, Kitty and her tray didn’t lose or gain energy, so the ice cream didn’t melt. She waited until she heard Illyana voice one of the dinosaurs saying, “Shall we take an after dinner walk, my dear?”  
  
Then Kitty turned solid and went to the fort’s door. “Delivery! I heard your restaurant was running low on ice cream, so the town’s mayor sent me with this special delivery for the whole staff because you’re doing such a good job.”  
  
Illyana laughed and scooted over to make room. Kitty put the tray on the ground, crawled in and pulled it after her.  
  
She ended up with a kid in her lap, slightly smaller than the one who’d climbed into Ilya’s. There was a dollop of ice cream making a cold spot on her pants and she could not have cared less. Illyana was licking stray ice cream off her wrist and trying to keep the kid and bowl in her lap more or less aligned.  
  
The other two kids had picked up the dinosaurs and were walking them around the town in between bites of their ice cream.  
  
Kitty whispered, “I’m afraid you’re saying we’re dinosaurs.”  
  
Illyana laughed, but then her face smoothed out, serious. “No, I’m saying sometimes the monsters are your friends.”  
  
#  
  
When we were all done with the ice cream that Kitty had brilliantly delivered, Sam, Dani and Rahne came to help put the kids to bed. They took the older two and left the younger two with me and Kitty. One wouldn’t let go of my hand and the other kept holding out arms to Kitty in the “pick me up” gesture.  
  
Kitty gave in and picked up the kid. She looked … perfect with a skinny kid in her arms, her hair all manner of frizz and static from sitting under a fort blanket, a dribble of ice cream on her pants, in just her socks with her shoes long ago kicked off.  
  
As we went down the hall, the kid asked Kitty, “You look like my daddy. Will you be my daddy until my real one comes back?”  
  
“Um, I guess yes,” Kitty said, but the look she gave me was deep worry.  
  
Of course, Kitty, puberty; she still feared that she wasn’t quite a woman yet and might never get there.  
  
“It’s your hair,” I told her.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I saw a photo. This one’s dad has long, dark hair like yours.”  
  
“Yeah and is probably about as flat-chested as me too,” she said with a grumble.  
  
“Maybe, since you’re making the world safe for this little one, you could worry about that later?”  
  
She rolled her eyes at me in a way that said: _I’ve babysat a thousand hours longer than you have_. And I returned the steady look that said: _not these kids_.  
  
She headed for the bedroom where all four kids had been sleeping the last two days. I carried mine into the bathroom and got two washcloths, dropped them in the sink, got them damp.  
  
Back in the bedroom, I handed Kitty one. “For getting ice cream off before the pajamas go on.”  
  
My kid was more tired than hers, so I had us washed up and in our pajamas while Kitty was still swabbing stray bits of ice cream. I tucked mine into bed and sat on the side, watching.  
  
Kitty dabbed with the wet and when the kid swiped at her and murmured, “Daddy, it’s too cold,” she used the distraction to get pants off and pajamas on. I felt like a meteor hitting the atmosphere and breaking into a thousand burning pieces. I wanted to wrap them in light and magic and never change this.  
  
The kid said, “Tell me a story, daddy.”  
  
Kitty looked over at me. “If you joke about this …”  
  
I shook my head and let her see, for a moment, the tears waiting behind my eyes. She ducked her head. And then she told the fairy tale I remembered as a child, the one with pirates and dragons. I leaned against the wall and let the tears come.  
  
When we left the sleeping kids, she said, “I’m sorry, was that too much?”  
  
“I love that story.”  
  
“Even though …”  
  
“You told it to me four years ago when I was eleven years younger? Yes, even though. Or because. I told it to myself a lot when I was scared. And variations.”  
  
“I want to hear the variations!”  
  
“Maybe,” I said. “I have to remember first and that will take some time to remember just that without remembering too much.”  
  
She let me not talk for a while and I was grateful.  
  
Later, in our room, she held her blanket up for me to climb into her bed, and I did. She put an arm around me and I rested my head on her shoulder.  
  
She asked, “Honestly, do I look like a boy?”  
  
I sighed and snuggled into her. I liked the matched mis-match of our problems. The way some days I had to remember to act like a regular person (I had been practicing: gentle eye contact, smile, how are you?, listen to the answer well enough to ask another boring question) and she struggled to look like the adult she was becoming or perhaps had also been for a while now.  
  
“A boy?” I mumbled into her shoulder. “About as much as I do.”  
  
“No, seriously,” she insisted.  
  
“It’s not like people have a lock on understanding what boy and girl are, since they’re mythic archetypes. But, that said, you are completely a girl.”  
  
“I don’t always look like one.”  
  
I sighed because we were yet again on the verge of ideas I didn’t have good English words for. Demonic was not a language that sounded beautiful to human ears, but it explained magic extremely well. It was not a language I wanted to speak in front of Kitty. But my translation pathway for these ideas tended to run from Demonic, through Russian, to English, so it took a while to work out what to say.  
  
“Yes, you do,” I said. That part was easy. Then, haltingly, “I know what you’re saying and it’s not … how things are. People here see surfaces. The world is not made of surfaces. The world is made of stories, of myth, of shared overlapping imaginal realities, of information. You always look like a girl to anyone who knows how to see reality.”  
  
“That is both comforting and kind of incomprehensible.”  
  
“Reality is,” I said and turned my face up to grin at her. She smiled softly, illuminated only by the moonlight coming through the gap between shade and window frame. Still, tightness around her smile, the worry was not gone yet.  
  
I added, “Katya, when I was very little, maybe five, I wanted to grow up to be my father. I am named for him, Nikolai, with my middle name, Nikolaevna. Some days I still want to grow up to be like him. He’s a good man, hard working, very funny in a dry way, very clever about practical things, and loving. The toys he used to make me, you should have seen them. I should ask Piotr to bring them if he can. … So when that kid calls you daddy, it makes my heart very big to know that a girl can grow up to be a daddy because that is what I wanted for myself.”  
  
Her eyes gleamed in the soft light. “Is that what you want our kids to call you?”  
  
I had not even dared to dream of that.  
  
Couldn’t even think …  
  
Because yes. Absolutely yes, to all of it. But how could we?  
  
I looked up at the blankness of the ceiling, thoughts whirlwinding, crashing together an breaking apart again.  
  
I was silent for so long she said, “I’m sorry, too much?”  
  
“No,” I said, not looking at her because I could only talk about this if I didn’t. “Yes. I want that. You would? How?”  
  
“The Shi’ar have the technology.”  
  
“Oh. Katya … oh.”  
  
“You want to be the dad?”  
  
“Yes, please. I know this is years away, but yes. So much.” I was crying again and trying not to cry and making a mess of it. I got out of her bed to find tissue and find space to not be so much of a mess about all the goodness.  
  
She followed me and caught up to me by the desk with the box of tissues and put her arms around me from behind. I turned and held on to her and tried to cry silently so she wouldn’t worry or maybe not know that this demolished me more than anything. To have family beyond the shattered mess of what I had now, beyond parents who did not recognize me, beyond the destruction that raised me, beyond Piotr’s distant confusion about how to treat me. Would I someday have a family of my own? And with Kitty?  
  
On the way back into bed, I said, “The Shi’ar … you have to make sure they can test me; that there isn’t corruption in my DNA.”  
  
“Ilya, there can’t be,” she said, but her voice was more sadness than denial.  
  
“No. There can be. I researched it. Promise me, if I carry a corruption from Belasco, you will tell me. I won’t carry that forward. I could not give that to a child.”  
  
She stared at the window shade, the ghostly light. “It’s too early to talk about that.”  
  
“Yes, and too late to be up. We should sleep.”  
  
Because I could not talk anymore. Not about this and, until I had put myself back together, not about anything.  
  
It didn’t matter if she didn’t make the promise. I’d already made it to myself a hundred times. As much as I wanted to have children someday, I would never pass on what had been done to me.


End file.
